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Will Ferrell's Hollywood Hills retreat is hardly in the boondocks — you could almost imagine socking a golf ball onto Hollywood Boulevard with a long drive and a few great downhill bounces — but when you come around a twisty road to his gate, you pause. Not that his driveway's way steep, but if you miss first gear, the next stop might be Tijuana.

This tract of lush growth was once a woodland hunting preserve for the town's elite, and the name of his street, which Ferrell will ask us not to reveal, translates to "a whale's vagina."

Actually, that's no truer than when Ferrell's Ron Burgundy character tried to impress Christina Applegate's Veronica Corningstone by proffering those three words as the German translation for San Diego.

In truth, the streets near here were first populated by actors: Dolores Del Rio, Boris Karloff, and other swells. As your car perches at the gate, pointing skyward, a discreet sign by the intercom alerts you to expect dogs once the gates swing open, and as you crest the driveway, Ferrell's Dalmatian, Charlie, is there wagging his tail. Two other canines are elsewhere, perhaps down the path, demarcated by tree-branch fencing that would seem to make it suitable for overgrown elves. In the coming months, Ferrell and family will move to a single, eco-friendly house being built nearby.

The actor emerges from what's called the Upper House, clad in a dress shirt, shorts, and sneakers, his ginger-brown hair bushier than one might expect. Even though his all-electric car trumps the visitor's Prius as a symbol of carbon neutrality, he doesn't fail to give it props.

The environment-minded Ferrell has long been a devout member of the Natural Resources Defense Council, and when the group held a fundraiser three years ago, Ferrell was there in full "Mission Accomplished" flight-suit gear, introduced as "the President of the United States" by Tom Hanks to deliver a sedulously obtuse speech in full Dubya mode ("Frankly, a lot of endangered species are gonna be extincted"). Later this day, Ferrell will say that he likes to play characters who are "in the same mold of unearned confidence, just really brash and cocky with kind of an undercurrent of complete insecurity."